This month, REEF is proud to highlight one of our outstanding Conservation Partners: Villa on Dunbar Rock and Cabanas on Clark's Cay, sister resorts located in Guanaja, part of the Bay Islands of Honduras. REEF Conservation Partners are active organizations and dive shops dedicated to protecting marine environments. As valued REEF ambassadors, they teach fish ID classes, host survey dives, organize volunteer events and more. With more than 80 partners across the country and beyond, there are plenty of opportunities to engage.
As 2020 gets underway, here are a few 2019 highlights from the Volunteer Fish Survey Project, REEF's citizen science marine life monitoring program, as of Jan 5, 2020.*
698 volunteer surveyors conducted and submitted 11,065 surveys in 2019. This number will definitely rise as members catch up on their backlog of data entry.
An additional 1,329 surveys were submitted in 2019 that were conducted in previous years.
It's a New Year and along with it come new Fishinars in our popular and free Fishinar program series. These online webinars are open to anyone, taught by experts and are mostly focused around fish ID with occasional other topics of interest for the waterlogged-at-heart. You can log in live from your laptop, desktop or even mobile device with the GoToWebinar app. All are recorded and free viewing after-the-fact is available to all REEF members as a benefit of REEF membership.
What they're saying about Fishinars:
This custom 10-night itinerary aboard the Rock Islands Aggressor is planned to coincide with a new moon, allowing us to dive a Bumphead Parrotfish spawning site. We conducted our first Field Survey in Palau in October 2016 and were astounded by the fish diversity, which included Reef Mantas visiting cleaning stations, huge schools of Unicornfish, and mating Mandarinfish.
Let's put our pectoral fins together for the following REEF members who have recently moved up an Experience Level in our Volunteer Fish Survey Project!
Volunteers have the opportunity to advance through 5 levels (Novice through Expert) within each of our survey project regions. Experience Levels are obtained by a combination of fish/invertebrate ID tests and numbers of submitted surveys. As they advance, their data is categorized in our online sightings database accordingly.
The holiday season is here, and that means cherished time with loved ones, plenty of celebrations, fun memories, and more. It can be tricky to choose the perfect holiday gift for your friends and family. We have the perfect solution!
Blue Heron Bridge (BHB) is a popular shore diving site located in West Palm Beach, Florida, just a two-and-a-half-hour drive from the REEF Campus in Key Largo. Voted one of the top dive sites in the world by Sport Diver in 2013, this area is well-known among divers for its abundance of unusual and interesting marine life. Because of the tidal currents in the area, one can only dive BHB at slack high tide when there is minimal current.
We are gearing up for our 2020 Field Survey Trip season, and it's bound to be a great year of REEF Trips to fantastic dive locations all over the world. We'll begin the year in Fiji aboard the fabulous NAI'A liveboard, followed by a trip to tiny Caribbean island of St. Eustatius in March. Both of these trips (as well as several others) are already sold out, but we still have limited space remaining on a handful of other Field Survey Trips next year. Spaces are filling fast, so if you'd like to join a Dive Vacation That Counts, we strongly suggest signing up as soon as possible.
This month, REEF is pleased to partner with MANG, an environmental apparel brand, to raise awareness for the Grouper Moon Project. MANG has created a special Grouper Moon shirt design, and 10% of the proceeds from the sale of this shirt during December will go towards supporting the Grouper Moon Project. As part of their commitment to conservation, MANG also plants one mangrove for every product sold.